I was on an unplanned week hiatus, and only recently came up with my 30th day drawing challenge (theme: anything steampunk). I was doing some research on steampunk objects and art and initially decided to do something like an interior vignette--(Note 1: I am a lot more comfortable with doing interiors being an ID graduate and licensee) (Note 2: an interior vignette complete with steampunk-style furniture and whatnot) but decided on a totally different track. I wanted to do a steampunk airship. For some reason, I was immediately attracted to the idea because I have a little obsession with balloons and balloon art. It's my first time doing a blimp / airship concept though, so I searched immediately for references. Some references led me searching for anatomies of a ship. Since I wanted to understand the forms and shapes better, I looked through the Google Sketchup 3D Warehouse for pirate ship models. Eventually ended up downloading models based on Pirates of the Carribean ships (Dutchman, etc). As for the blimp/airship concept, the references were a whole lot. It's a popular subject in steampunk digital paintings. Plus it's pretty close to what you'd see on Final Fantasy game art (though FF art is not necessarily steampunk). I also Google-searched industrial blimps (as Steampunk is essentially inspired by 19th century technology) to simulate the design. The following sketches are what I initially came up with as studies prior to the digital painting process: It took me a few days to finally get an idea down using Photoshop. I wanted to emulate the concept I developed from the initial sketches. I wanted a good background, so I started out with sky and clouds in a stormy/rainy setting, experimenting with different brushes such as the Soft Round and Watercolor tips. During this process, I was watching tutorial videos by Matt Kohr and Cubebrush's Marc Brunet as well. It's fun to learn as you paint so that you can definitely apply the concepts they teach as well as pick up some techniques from their process. The second image is the work in progress. I spent a lot of time getting the blimp right with all the shades and textures. It was my first time creating a custom brush from a rust-like photo-realistic texture. I followed some of Marc Brunet's tips for creating brushes from textures and used them on the blimp's hulking metal form. The rusted metal effect was so cool. It's a very subtle effect but the texture does wonders for the painting. I used it with a mix of colors like rust-red and shades of brown. It was a fun process painting the details on the ship as well. The gold metallic-looking texture was initially a challenge, albeit a fun one. I had the most fun detailing the frontmost part of the blimp with an ornamental finial using reference photos. The initial plan was to paint in the mass of the ship underneath, but here I was getting carried away with the fun of detailing. It's not yet my strong suit, but... I'm pretty stoked about it. I think I'm slowly getting the hang of switching between the hard round and soft round brushes, in tandem with the eraser tool (Neat tip from Matt Kohr's video). The final image has a bit of a dramatic flair. There were several changes I made during the process workflow after observing the artwork with "fresher eyes". For one thing, I figured that the blimp looked too flat and untrue to its shape. Since the form is a bit cylindrical, I adjusted the shadows following what I learned recently from Matt Kohr's videos on light and shadow. He explains that the first step in determining your shadow is to imagine a "terminator line" from where the light is hitting an object. I love how he teaches in a really scientific way (but I digress). Used a lot of dodge-and-burn tools as well to increase the overall contrast.
The ship was a lot easier to deal with, having sketched a few studies for familiarization. It was a matter of painting the basic shapes and tone values before anything else. It's a lot less detailed than the ship models I used for studies, but I'm happy with it all the same. The wood texture was simulated by custom brush (I had a lot of fun with this) and the finial/ornamentation for the gold trims were inspired by the finial I used for the blimp. In a nutshell, it took quite a few days to do this but I'm really happy that I trusted the process. The result is far better than I could ever imagine, and the final piece is pretty close to what I had in mind. Thus concludes my 30-day drawing challenge! Looking forward to more paintings and sketches in the near future!
0 Comments
|
Nonsensical whimHi, I'm Ashley. This is my blog on journey towards discovering art and documenting my learning experiences. (Particularly Photoshop, Digital Painting, Sketchup/V-ray, Interior Design, fun tutorials I've discovered and the like). wordpress:TUMBLR:Archives
December 2018
Categories
All
|